


Sandstorm Shadows

by dogmatix



Category: Persona 4, Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Episode: e019 The Sandstorm, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-18
Updated: 2013-11-18
Packaged: 2018-01-02 00:05:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1050177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dogmatix/pseuds/dogmatix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carlos meets his double during the sandstorm.  It's not quite what he expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sandstorm Shadows

Carlos closed the door behind him, cutting the howling winds to bearable levels.  Hacking out sand, he patted at his formerly-white labcoat to get some of the dust off.  He’d sent most of the others home when the warning had come in about the sandstorm, though Epcot was still in the building somewhere, shutting down or pausing all the experiments she could.  The tinny sound of the radio echoed down the hallway, Cecil’s voice reassuring as always.  
  
Finally getting his breathing under control, Carlos wiped at his glasses, but only improved visibility by a small margin – he was all over dust from being outside.  He heard something heavy drag across the floor from one of the rooms, and his trouble-sense went on alert.  “Epcot?”  
  
“Oh, I think she’s a bit busy,” a slightly distorted voice spoke form behind him.  
  
“What?” Carlos yelped as he spun around, stumbling back.  He’d just closed the door, there couldn’t have been anyone behind him but there was – and it was him.  
  
Or, or he thought it was.  The figure was the same height as him, the same dark skintone, the same black hair greying at the temples, the same glasses.  But the labcoat, while white, was the sort that mad scientists wore in bad B-movies – buttoned up the side and neck, with black gloves pulled up almost to the elbows.  The hair, too, was different – slicked back and cut short – and the man’s eyes were a glowing, unnatural yellow.  “Wh-who are you?” Carlos asked his doppelganger.  
  
The man’s grin grew impossibly, revealing perfect white teeth.  “Oh, make a hypothesis. Better yet, take a wild guess.  It’s about the same thing, right?”  
  
Someone gave a muted yell, but Carlos didn’t let himself look away from the predator in front of him.  “You’re a double of me, created by the sandstorm.”  He’d caught enough of Cecil’s broadcast, and had been in Nigh Vale long enough to be able to adapt on the fly when the next impossible thing presented itself.  
  
The man clapped his hands slowly, starting to stalk closer.  “Oh, good try, good try.  But would a newly created ‘double’ know that you hate Night Vale?  Would a mere ‘double’ know that you sometimes wonder if Cecil is stupid or just inhuman?”  
  
Carlos backed up instinctively, not wanting his double too close.  “I don’t-“ Carlos objected, bristling, but the man kept talking.  
  
“Would a double know that you want to tie Cecil down and just _cut him open_?  Drag out all those answers that you can never find?”  
  
“I don’t want to do that!” Carlos yelled back, bumping into something a second later.  His double had backed him against the cold cement wall.  
  
Somewhere in the building Epcot yelled, and something crashed.  
  
“Oh don’t you?” the double purred, less than a foot away, manic yellow eyes pinning Carlos fast where he stood.  “Down deep in your heart of hearts, you want Cecil spread open on a slab, yours to play with, yours to open up.  Because you _like_ him.”  
  
“No!”  
  
“Yes!  And do you know how I know all of this? I know it because _I am you_!”   
  
“No, you’re not me!” Carlos yelled back, livid.  
  
The double froze, almost seemed to shudder, eyes opening so wide Carlos could see the whites all around its glowing yellow irises.  “Say it again,” the double said, soft and eager and dangerous.  
  
Carlos stilled. He shouldn’t-  “You’re-!”  He managed to close his mouth on the rest of the sentence, but it was much more difficult than it should have been, even angry and provoked as he was.   He had to think, though it was like slogging through mud.  
  
The double wanted him to repeat it.  He had goaded Carlos from the first second, goading him towards this.  Why?  
  
A chilling laugh echoed down the corridor and an unintelligible, distorted voice rose and fell in its wake.  
  
Neither Carlos nor his double moved.  
  
His double wanted Carlos to deny him.  Needed Carlos to reject him.  Why?  The horrible addendum was that if the double really was connected to him, then it might actually be right when it said it _was_ him.  Or at least a part of him.  
  
With a start, Carlos realized that the double was still staring at him, only he wasn’t smiling that too-bright smile anymore.  The eyes were still intense, waiting, but the sense of barely restrained maniacal laughter was gone.  
  
Oh god, Carlos wanted to think of himself as a good person, he didn’t _want_ to admit…  
  
“Sometimes it feels like Night Vale is driving me crazy.  I hate it a bit, for that.  But that’s not Night Vale’s fault.”  Well, that was the easy part out of the way.   
  
“Cecil is… even for Night Vale he’s different, strange.  I, I want to know about him, I want to know everything about him.”  Carlos shuddered, slumping against the wall.  “I want to dig out all his secrets and hold them in my hands.”  Deep breath.  “But I don’t want to _hurt_ him.  Even if he is beyond frustrating sometimes.  Because.  Because I like him.  It’s not scientific, and I can pretty much throw objectivity out of the window,” Carlos chuckled helplessly, “But I like Cecil. Maybe more than a little."  
  
It felt like he’d run a marathon.   
  
Carlos dragged his gaze back to his double’s.  “You are me,” he admitted. He felt ashamed, but at the same time freer.  
  
His double nodded, starting to glow.  No, not just glow – fade, or maybe transform.  A voice reverberated silently in Carlos’ head.  _‘I art thou, and thou art I.’  
  
_ It towered over him for a moment, a glowing figure of white and gold with a stylized ibis mask and glowing yellow eyes.  _Hermes Trismegestus_ , Carlos knew without knowing how. Flickers of lightning coruscated over the figure as it faded.  
  
Instinctively Carlos held out his hand as a card materialized from thin air, dropping gently into his waiting hand.  He caught a glimpse of a black silhouette of a walking figure and the numeral ‘0’ before the card disappeared as well.  
  
His to call on.  His to _summon_.  It made no sense, but that was Night Vale in a nutshell, wasn’t it.  Leaning against the wall for support, Carlos let his mind white out for a minute.  
  
A great shattering of glass shook him into awareness again, and something that sounded almost like Epcot laughed.  Hermes nudged at Carlos from inside his psyche somewhere, and Carlos took off running.

**Author's Note:**

> The sandstorm is kind of like the fog in Persona 4. At least that's my rationale and I'm sticking with it. :P
> 
> I'm kind of scared to find out what Cecil's Shadow is like. Unless it's Kevin, in which case I'm still scared. Although between the two of them, Kevin seems more like the one repressing reality to give it the best slant, while Cecil reports things in all their hideous truth, so... Cecil is more likely to be the Shadow in that equation. Which could give Cassette a new and interesting interpretation.
> 
> Also yes I know Junpei had Hermes Tris. in P3, but honestly, Hermes Trismegestus is perfect for Carlos, I mean mythical all-knowing alchemist? C'mon. XD And yes, Carlos is of the Fool Arcana. I considered making him Magician, but he's in Night Vale voluntarily, trying to make sense of it. If that doesn't qualify him for boundless optimism, I don't know what does.


End file.
